Goals and vacation don’t sound like they go together. After all, vacations aren’t supposed to be work, and goals seem like work. But Harvard Business Review makes a valid point—setting goals for your vacation helps you prioritize what you want to get out of them.

I’ve often taken vacations with certain expectations in mind—mostly to relax. Then I’ll forget all about that expectation by trying to cram a month’s worth of activities into a week. HBR suggests a better way:

it pays to know upfront what success looks like in a vacation, so you don’t end up frittering away limited time. Your goal may be to reconnect with your spouse, spend quality time with your kids, catch up on reading, kickstart a new fitness regimen, make progress on a novel you’re writing, or literally just vegetate. Any of those are worthy goals, but they should be articulated upfront so you can prioritize them.

It’s a goal, but it’s more like a goal for having fun. I do think it’s important to make sure this is a low-maintenance goal. It’s more of a priority, really. You don’t want to come back from vacation feeling like you’ve failed at something, and you certainly don’t want to come back feeling like you need a vacation from your vacation.

Hell, maybe your goal is to simply not worry about self-improvement or recharging or whatever—it’s perfectly fine to have a goal that’s simply “do nothing, just relax.” The idea is to create the goal so you can prioritize it.

HBR makes a good case for this, and you can read about it more at the link below.